Living low carb in an Asian world

Low Carb BBQ Pulled Chicken

I don’t understand people who eat out all the time. Yes, I know that Singapore has ridiculously good food at really good prices (and our hawker food has now been honored by Bib Gourmand Michelin Stars), but I don’t really understand how one can eat out all the time, every day. This must not be uncommon because if you check out the new condominium developments in Singapore, the kitchens are about the size of a closet with enough counter space only to put a kettle, rice cooker and maybe a toaster. I would never be able to survive in an apartment like that. Our family did rent a tiny apartment for a season where there was barely enough space in the kitchen for one person, let alone two…which was why I fell in love with the layout of the apartment I now live in – both a wet kitchen and a dry kitchen…woot! The place I live in now was the most wonderful impulse buy of my life.

But honestly and seriously, I have even churned out decent meals in hotel rooms on a mini-electric cooker. I think one only needs one pot, one skillet, one chopping board and one chef’s knife and spatula to survive. I personally love going on holiday and cooking in serviced apartments and hotel rooms. I even inveigle myself into friends’ homes and cook there.

The reality of my life however is that I actually don’t cook as much as I would like to. I am really pretty time-pressed most of the time and weekends are a precious commodity. Weekends are often packed with church stuff if I am not on call. I still do try to get my Sabbath rest, which is why I never do meetings with people on a Sunday as this is strictly family and snooze time. Sunday dinner is always at home because Sunday evening is usually the time when the kids discover that they had a pile of homework glowing radioactively at the bottom of their school bags, and would really pull long faces if we suggested going out for a long drawn meal.

Which is why the Instant Pot has been such a lifesaver for me. Because I can usually do a decent super quick throw-in-the-pot meat dish, it’s an absolute breeze to do a quick vegetable stir fry, a stove top soup and a carb-less staple within an hour or two…and get my afternoon nap as well.

So this past weekend my Instant Pot meat dish was BBQ pulled chicken. It had to be pulled chicken and not pork because of my kosher/halal husband (long story). My favorite low carb blog, All Day I Dream About Food has an awesome chipotle whiskey BBQ sauce which I threw into the same pot. Of course in the middle of preparing the sauce I got distracted and started to reorganize my liquor cabinet, which again underlined how easy this recipe was that it gave me enough time to potter around, tidy up and have a nap too! I didn’t even defrost the chicken breasts and they came straight from the freezer into the pot.

So this is why this recipe has been labeled “ridiculously easy” – it is. It is the reason why on the recent Amazon Prime Day, the Instant Pot was the highest selling item, selling more than 200,000 pots in a day. I think I may have been instrumental in enticing quite a few people into getting their own pots…but it’s all for good because this kind of cooking is truly ridiculously easy and trouble-free. I feel virtuously efficient. 😄

ASIAN LOW CARB FOOD QUEST

It's Singapore. The natives are restless. They seem to think of food from the time they wake up in the morning till the wee hours of the morning. To survive this food jungle, low carbers must go on a quest to discover how to avoid traps like rice, noodles and wheat. Join me on this journey of rediscovering Asian food the low-carb way. You may yet survive this quest.